Growl - A PETA'm Up? | Sega Genesis Review

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s you couldn’t walk into your local 7-11 or arcade without
being enveloped by the blaring sounds of fists crunching faces and over-exaggerated grunts
of pummeled bad guys emanating from a myriad of beat-em-ups that at the time, dominated
the coin-op market.
Popularized by the highly-influential Double Dragon and then later Final Fight, beat-em-ups
were a dime a dozen, with the majority of them being fairly mediocre or even downright
terrible.
One beat-em-up that’s often lost in the shuffle is Taito’s Growl, or Runark as it’s
known in Japan.
In it you play as a team of forest rangers on a mission to rescue endangered, wild animals
from a group of evil poachers.
The game supported 4-player co-op play, and taking place during the first half of the
20th century, offered a different and unique environment as opposed to the urban setting
tropes that most beat-em-ups adhered to.
The game was then ported to the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive in 1991, and not uncommon for
many arcade-to-home ports, some liberties were taken during the transition from the
arcade to home version.
The port city of Machanga is a haven for poachers to engage in their illegal enterprises, and
the trend of the rich obtaining rare and exotic animals as pets has hit its perpetual peak.
A team of four agents from a group known as PAWS: Protectors of Animals’ World Society,
is sent in to abolish the poaching trade, and rescue the numerous animals subjected
to inhumane conditions and incarceration.
The malevolent group known as RAPO: The Rendow Animal Protection Organization, cuz you know,
every animal organization has to go by an acronym, is disguised as a group that offers
sanctuary to exotic animals, but in reality, is the root of the poaching problem.
Growl begins in the same manner as the arcade version —with a bang!
The comic book “kablams” and “kabooms” were removed from the Sega version.
Like many 16-bit arcade-to-home brawlers, cooperative play has unfortunately, been completely
removed.
You still have the ability to choose between four different characters, each with their
own strengths and weaknesses.
From the onset, Growl immediately gives you the choice between a multitude of different
weapons.
There’s a ton of instruments of destruction within this game, and no shortage of ‘em
throughout.
It isn’t long before you encounter a scumbag whipping a poor lion to ribbons.
Idiot--bringing a whip to a bazooka fight!
You’re often surrounded by thugs ready to administer a thorough ass-whoopin’.
You have regular attacks at your disposal in the form of punches and kicks, jump attacks,
and similar to Final Fight, an emergency melee maneuver which gets you out of a pinch at
the cost of some health.
Your life meter is sectioned off into four squares, and once completely depleted, the
game is over.
You can choose between three to seven credits in the options and continue right from where
you left off.
Health replenishing items are scarce, but thankfully the members of PAWS are able to
absorb an ample amount of damage.
While many of Growl’s peers seem to have heavily borrowed elements from both Double
Dragon and especially Final Fight, Growl feels a bit different from those two, kind of like
the way P.O.W. felt different to me versus other brawlers.
Most beat-em-ups, and most action games, period, are broken up into stages.
While that is also true here, it sure doesn’t feel like it.
According to the instruction manual, Growl consists of seven stages.
Once a boss is defeated, such as this big dude wearing straps of dynamite--
"Hey, wait a minute. Those are hot dogs. Armour Hot Dogs."
--the screen scrolls nonchalantly to the next stage.
While Double Dragon also did this, that game at least provided some text at the end and
beginning of each stage.
In fact, the arcade version of Growl does it as well with the tally of bonus points.
Shit, you don’t even get bonus points on the Genesis version, let alone any text.
This makes the game feel as if it’s just one long, continuous battle.
While at first I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, as it did seem kind of strange
and unorthodox, I learned to get used to, and then eventually embrace it, as I like
the way the game flows without many interruptions.
It’s different.
The gameplay is pretty good for your average beat-em-up, but the hit detection isn’t
as tight as say, Streets of Rage.
Often when surrounded by baddies, your only recourse is to escape by melee attack, so
you have to sometimes adopt a stick-and-move fighting strategy.
Unless you grab the whip that is, which is undeniably the most useful weapon in the game.
"Wa-pah!"
The whip strikes enemies both in front and behind you.
Being swarmed with the whip in hand is nothing more than a mild annoyance.
You can run the table with this bad-boy.
Devo's Whip It: "I say whip it. Whip it good."
And when a weapon is dropped, it can be picked up and reused as long as you can hold onto
it, save for guns and bazookas—ya know, weapons with ammunition.
The only way you’ll lose a weapon for good is if you fail to retrieve it before it disappears
after several seconds.
If you can hang onto the whip for the majority of the game, the one percenters are gonna
hafta find other ways to show off to their affluent and pretentious acquaintances.
The visuals in Growl are a bit drab in the city, jungle and cave settings, but it actually
fits the theme of the game well, and looks fairly close to its arcade counterpart.
But one thing that seemed to be unnecessarily changed in the Genesis version is the time
period in which Growl takes place.
The arcade version is set during the first half of the 20th century, around the same
time as Indiana Jones.
Hell, two of the characters from Growl look just like Indy, don’t they?
But in the Genesis version, the story actually takes place in the future, in 1998.
Yeah, the old timey trains and attire that the enemies don in the game just scream “‘90s”,
don’t they?
Why was this done?
The arcade narrative seems much more intriguing for the fact that Growl takes place during
an entirely different time period versus your stereotypical beat-em-up.
The music on the other hand is nothing special, although it does compliment the game well.
While the soundtrack is nothing I would listen to during my free time, the mid-tempo and
sometimes tranquil tunes played throughout Growl grew on me, and I actually prefer some
of the 16-bit renditions over the arcade ones.
That’s pretty uncommon for me!
There aren’t too many types of different enemies to encounter, which some people may
find a bit dull, but it didn’t really bother me.
Why the women look as if they’re dressed for the office in the middle of the jungle
is beyond me, but that doesn’t stop ‘em from hurling grenades.
Gotta love that meat shower!
Thankfully though, the animals that you rescue will sometimes assist you in your plight against
RAPO.
Like I mentioned before, the entire game pretty much runs together seamlessly without any
stage-to-stage transitions, with a bonus stage thrown in for the hell of it, and this dark
cave where you can hardly see who you hit.
This is my least favorite part of the game, but at least it replaced this…
Platforming in a beat-em-up has to be one of my biggest gaming pet peeves.
*cough* Double Dragon II.
And in the end, it turns out that the evil poachers were being controlled by aliens all along
"There's nobody that evil in real life."
by selling endangered animals to the rich, to fund their arsenal to attack the evil moon
men on the planet Valkar.
OK, so I made that last part up, but the whole alien thing is kinda stupid, too.
The Genesis alien was completely changed from the arcade one.
Growl is a bit on the easy side.
Even on Hard difficulty I was still able to beat the game drunk with three credits.
The game feels a bit short as you’re playing it, most likely due to the quick-pace of the
game, but is usually completed within 40 minutes. "Jumanji!"
While it may not be as good as Streets of Rage or Final Fight, and may be a fairly average
beat-em-up, not really bringing anything new to the table, I really enjoyed it and had
a lot of fun.
It’s a fairly decent arcade port.
Unfortunately, the price of this game is something to growl at, and unless you’re a die-hard
brawler fanatic, I can’t recommend it for what it’s going for these days.
But the arcade version is available on the Taito Legends 2 compilation on PS2 and Xbox,
so you may wanna go that route.
Either way, when you fuck with animals, it’s on.

Growl - A PETA'm Up? | Sega Genesis Review

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